Day 3: Great Wall at Huanghua

Matt and I tend not to go for organised tours. We like to take the local, infinitely less convenient, but more rewarding (we hope) route.

So getting to the Wall was an adventure. We decided to head to Huanghua, one of the more "authentic" pieces of wall. A few of the other pieces of wall have been renovated and bus-loads of tourists swamp them. We were hoping for a few solitary moments amongst the ruins, but having experienced Japanese tourist destinations firsthand, we figured our chances were fairly slim...

All tuckered out in Huairou

We left the hotel at 7.30 a.m, yes, peak hour, we know, so we got to the Bus station at 8.30 a.m. Our local #916 bus to Huairou was last tuned back in 'Nam and the gear box sounded like it was crunching the road with every change.

2 hours later we rolled into Huairou and were accosted by 10 "miandi" (tiny yellow fans with bucket sofa seats in the back) drivers. We negotiated a price for the return trip to the Wall, the miandi drivers being infinitely better at it than us, and we were set to go. But first I had to negotiate my first "Ni Hao" toilet in the Bus Station...

Now, I'm not shy about getting my kit off in front of strangers, but going to the toilet is another ball-game entirely. And the concept of having someone peeing across the wall from me, whilst not my preference, is also dealable. But the woman who was having a nice cup of tea and a sit down before me, decided to stand in front of me and stare at me the whole time I was peeing. The whole time. Until I pulled my panties up and flushed the toilet (which, may I add, she was unable to do herself). Maybe she was waiting for her friend in the next stall. Maybe she just wanted to watch me pee. Talk about performance anxiety. It was the singularly longest pee I've ever had in my life.

The drive to the wall was a maze of ramshackle houses, desolate rolling hills, cherry blossoms and winding, unpaved roads. Although our stomachs lurched into our mouths once too often, the miandi driver got us there safely (Kinki searches the heavens and gives thanks for a miracle).

As you know, being a photographile, I take my camera everywhere, and I faithfully dragged it to the Wall, looking forward to going crazy. It may have helped if I'd remembered to bring the battery. Just a hunch.

The Great Wall at Huanghua

So I endured one of the most photogenic structures in the world without it. Matt had the Sony Handycam, but it just. wasn't. the. same. Disappointment set in. The Huanghua piece of the wall, however, did not disappoint. It winds along the cliff-face, one of the watch towers looming over the entrance where the miandi driver let us off. The western stretch starts at the derelict watch tower and meanders for miles. The eastern stretch we didn't navigate. The two stretches are separated by the road. It is entirely unrenovated. Chunks of the battlement which had fallen away, were piled up in the middle of the wall's path. For an authentic experience, it can't be beat.

Unfortunately, at a certain point along the western stretch, the wall angles up at nearly 60 degrees, which Dicky Knee balked at, antsy cow. So Matt continued along while I sat and pondered the view - crumbling relics of wall stretching into misty oblivion with cherry blossoms dotting the side of the cliff. There are worse places to spend an hour in quiet contemplation. Save for the hard-sell one of the hawkers gave me as he followed me up the wall. I bought the Great Wall book just to get rid of him. Jeez, can't a girl just get some peace?

If this were Japan, and the Japanese got wind that there was a cherry blossom feast to be had at a famous relic, the place would be swamped. We saw 6 people (not including the hawkers). The whole time. It was bliss.

Half-way back to the bus, our miandi driver ran out of petrol. We waited for half an hour while his mate presumably siphoned some petrol out of his own car and brought it to us on his motorcycle. The driver was acutely sheepish. But it was at this point that I had a personal revelation of sorts, about bargaining and the droves of hawkers, which made it easier to deal with them...

Sunset over Beijing

Kinki's Daily Dose... Bargaining

Yes, they're annoying and you can't walk ten metres without being accosted by a herd of them, but you can't help but admire the hawker's/taxi driver's/rickshaw driver's enterpreneurial spirit.

It's not my place to give a diatribe about the gap between an ostensibly communist government and the reality of the commonpeople's economic survival, because I simply don't know enough about it (and I simply don't know when to stop), but the hawkers seem intent on survival in a country where they really don't own anything and have to get by somehow. And supply always seemed to outweigh demand so competition is fierce, but interestingly, friendly enough. A weird kind of supportive "us" vs "them" mentality.

So when we were bargaining with the miandi driver, I knew tourists before us had probably gotten the same deal for cheaper, but when the miandi ran out of petrol, I felt really sorry for the driver. He's doing his damnedest to survive, and probably couldn't afford to fill up his tank (we hoped he simply wasn't a flake, which is entirely possible). Maybe he just assumed when the day began that he would probably return home without a customer and didn't bother. I started thinking, "yeah, I could have bargained him down to 70 yuan for the return trip, but how much do I care about what amounts to $A3?" Answer - I didn't.

I stopped bargaining hard after that. I sucked at it anyway, and I managed to knock off a few yuan on most things, but I didn't try too hard.

Kinki's China Tip for the Day

Take your camera with you everywhere outside where you're staying 'cos you never know what you're gonna see in Beijing. Just remember to take your battery, film or memory stick. It's imperative.

Great Wall at Huanghua Photo Gallery